Introduction
Infection with tuberculosis occurs, as a rule, by airborne droplets through particles containing M. tuberculosis. They are spread primarily by coughing, singing, and other forced breathing by people with active pulmonary or laryngeal tuberculosis and whose sputum contains large numbers of microorganisms. Individuals with large lung lesions are especially contagious due to the large number of bacteria contained in the cavities. Transmission is increased by frequent or prolonged contact with untreated patients who shed large quantities of tubercle bacilli in crowded, closed, poorly ventilated areas. Thus, people living in inadequate sanitary conditions or in healthcare facilities are at particular risk. In addition, practitioners who frequently examine patients have a high chance of contracting TB.
Tuberculosis is one of the most common diseases in the world, and it is mainly caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis and most often affects human lungs. It is transmitted mainly by airborne droplets when talking, coughing, sneezing, or using household items that were used by tuberculosis patients. It is mentioned in the legislative documents of the inhabitants of Babylon (Baiee, 2022). Traces of tuberculosis lesions were found in the remains of the bones of ancient people. The description of the disease was found in Egyptian hieroglyphs, old Persian books, and Indian Vedas. Hammurabi’s Babylonian laws established the right to divorce a woman if she contracted tuberculosis (Zucconi, 2019). Tuberculosis has many symptoms, and that is why it was not recognized as a single disease for a long time.
Main Body
After studying tuberculosis for a long time, people began to understand how it can be treated. In 1822, British doctor James Carson tried to cure a patient with an artificial pneumothorax (Mazzarello, 2020). The spread of the disease was observed by many doctors of that time, but it was not possible to make any significant achievements. To prove the contagiousness of the infection, the French doctor Jean-Antoine Villemain collected the sputum of the infected and placed it in a container with guinea pigs (Natarajan et al., 2020). Infection of animals served as proof that the disease is transmitted quite quickly. Later, the scientist was able to isolate a pure culture of the pathogen, which was called Koch’s bacillus, and caused tuberculosis in experimental animals. Later, French scientists Calmet and Guérin created a vaccine strain of mycobacteria for vaccination. Clinical and experimental studies of the vaccine showed its relative harmlessness, and mortality from tuberculosis among vaccinated children became significantly lower than among unvaccinated ones. The vaccine began to be used on a large scale already in the mid-1930s, and since the 1950s, vaccination of newborns has become mandatory (Gorbach, 2022). Streptomycin, in the first decades after its discovery, was very effective against mycobacteria but subsequently lost its clinical effect and is rarely used nowadays. However, the discovery of streptomycin ushered in an antibacterial era in the treatment of tuberculosis. In the United States, throughout history, since the advent of cures for tuberculosis, the number of cases of the disease has decreased every year.
In South Carolina, TB has been on a downward trend since 1980, but more recently, the numbers have begun to fluctuate from high to low cases. The absence of indicators may be due to the fact that they were practically static and did not change for many years. Figure 1 shows that in the period from 1980 to 2021, the cases of the disease were dynamic and did not always decrease (Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022). A stable downward trend in incidence can only be traced from 1981 to 1986. Later, there was a surge, and more people started to get sick, however, from 1992 to 2019, the situation returned to normal. In 2021, the disease scored a new indicator higher than in the previous one, which may indicate ineffective preventive methods of control. Tuberculosis infection rates are important because the disease is very life-threatening and spreads easily. The higher the indicators, the more they can be next year if not enough attention is paid to this problem. The increase in rates in recent years may be the result of the coronavirus pandemic. Disruptions in health services have not only had a negative impact on the fight against tuberculosis, but in this area, they have led to particularly serious consequences. The number of people infected and dying from the disease has been much higher due to the effects of COVID-19, which has taken a toll on the state’s medical sector. In addition to official statistics, many people suffer from tuberculosis but do not yet know about it. If we take into account all such cases, and then the indicators will be even higher, which is a bad result.
To reduce cases of tuberculosis infection, planned preventive work should be developed to improve public health. The main goal of specific prevention of tuberculosis is the development of specific individual and collective immunity in children and adults. This is achieved with the vaccine of the original live but attenuated strain of TB. The biological activity of the vaccine is associated with the ability to take root in the body of the vaccinated, multiply at the site of vaccination, and give a specific response, accompanied by an allergic restructuring of the body, which makes it possible to use it for the prevention of tuberculosis.
Conclusion
Despite its increased ability to be transmitted from person to person, it is worth saying that tuberculosis is a curable disease. This is proven by the fact that for most of human history, after the invention of the vaccine, infection levels fell. Considering this, it can be concluded that the recent jumps in incidence rates in the state of South Carolina depend on the fact that the public health system is not effective enough. This may also be a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic, which has caused significant damage to the healthcare system.
References
Baiee, H. A. (2022). Epidemiologic Features of Tuberculosis in Hilla City, Babylon Governorate. Hilla Uinversity College Journal, 1(01), 25-56.
Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022). Tuberculosis (TB) Incidence in the United States, 1953–2021. Web.
Gorbach, J. (2022). Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda: by John Maxwell Hamilton, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 2020, 664 pp. Web.
Mazzarello, P. (2020). A Physical Cure for Tuberculosis: Carlo Forlanini and the Invention of Therapeutic Pneumothorax. Applied Sciences, 10(9), 3138. Web.
Natarajan, A., Beena, P. M., Devnikar, A. V., & Mali, S. (2020). A systemic review on tuberculosis. Indian Journal of Tuberculosis, 67(3), 295-311. Web.
Zucconi, L. M. (2019). Ancient Medicine: From Mesopotamia to Rome. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing.